


Caring For You

by MissReylo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 02:32:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14760927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissReylo/pseuds/MissReylo
Summary: “If something was wrong you would tell me, right? Then we could figure it out together. You don’t have to do everything all on your own.”The Doctor forced himself to smile. He walked over to her, putting his hands on her shoulder. “You worry too much, Y/N.”“I don’t worry, I care Doctor,” Y/N said.





	Caring For You

“You have to be more careful,” Y/N said. She wrapped the bandage around the Doctor’s hand. “You’re so reckless, it’s like you want to get hurt.”  
“Who in the universe wants to get hurt?” the Doctor asked, not looking at his companion.  
Y/N sighed. “People who think they deserve to be punished. Lonely, broken, lost people, Doctor.”  
“That’s not me,” he said.  
Y/N didn’t say anything. She put the medical stuff away in the drawers of the medical bay, her lips pursed. The Doctor looked at his hand. She’d done good. In a few days his hand would be better. The painkillers were starting to kick in too, so that was nice.  
“Doctor...” Y/N started, her back still towards the Doctor.  
“Yes?”  
“If something was wrong you would tell me, right? Then we could figure it out together. You don’t have to do everything all on your own.”  
The Doctor forced himself to smile. He walked over to her, putting his hands on her shoulder. “You worry too much, Y/N.”  
“I don’t worry, I care Doctor,” Y/N said.  
“Stop caring,” the Doctor told her, “because everything’s fine. You shouldn’t spend your time worrying about me.”  
He stopped there. He had so much more to say. He wanted to grab her and shake her, yelling at her to leave, to get out before he got too attached to her.  
Because by being here with him, by smiling at him and touching him like he was a man made of glass she was digging her own grave. Everybody he ever liked left, everybody he ever loved died.  
He was cursed, just like the King from that human fairytale... he ruined everything he touched. He would rather have everything turned into gold. He could live without food, right, but he didn’t think he would survive losing another one.  
“All right,” Y/N said, leaning towards him and pressing a soft kiss on his cheek.  
He flinched.

“What are you afraid of, Doctor?”  
The Doctor looked up from the book he was skimming. Y/N was standing in front of him in her swimming suit, dripping wet, her eyes like always a bit too big, her cheeks flushed.  
“What?”  
“What are you afraid of, Doctor?” Y/N asked again, extending her hand. She smelled like chlorine. So, she had finally discovered the TARDIS’ swimming pool.  
“Why are you asking me that?” he asked.  
“Because I read that asking questions like that helps bonding people. I’ve been asking myself all morning what I’m afraid of, so I want to know your answer,” Y/N said.  
The Doctor chuckled. “You’re bonkers.”  
“Absolutely bonkers,” Y/N agreed, “so?”  
“Ghosts,” the Doctor said.  
“Ghosts? I thought you said they didn’t exist,” Y/N asked, frowning.  
The Doctor closed his book. “Not that kind of ghosts. I’m afraid of the ghosts of my past.”

He smelled blood.  
There was nobody bleeding on the TARDIS, he knew this. Y/N was in the kitchen, making the alien tea she had been scammed into buying. He could smell her. Just out of the shower, her hair still a bit wet. She had applied some body lotion. She was happy, she was radiating contentedness.  
She wasn’t the one who was bleeding to death. Nobody was bleeding to death, he tried to tell himself. But with every step he was bracing himself for the bodies he was sure he would encounter around the corner. He was back on the battlefields.  
“Doctor?”  
The Doctor suddenly realized which door he had just walked by. The kitchen’s door. Y/N was pouring boiling water in her cup, frowning at him.  
“You alright?”  
“I’m always alright,” he said.  
“Not always,” Y/N said, “Doctor, you’re walking around like you’re expecting some hitman to jump out of a closet to slash your throat! Come in, try a little bit of the tea with me.”  
The Doctor rolled with his eyes and murmured something about how he could never say no to her. But when he sat down and listened to Y/N chatter about the bullshit the lady of the shop had told her, he realized he couldn’t smell the blood any more.

"Why do you keep asking that?” the Doctor almost yelled.  
“What!?” Y/N yelled back, her hands on her hips.  
“If I’m alright!”  
Y/N huffed. “Because I care!”  
“Nobody cares about me!” the Doctor said, his voice breaking.  
“Well, I’ve got some news for you, Doctor. I’m here! And I care about you because I bloody love you!” Y/N screamed. “So don’t push me away, don’t lock me out when I want to help you! I don’t know what you’ve been through, I don’t know why you feel like you don’t deserve to be loved, Doctor, because you never talk to me!”  
The Doctor didn’t say anything. He just stared at the girl in front of him, the girl who was panting from yelling so loudly, the girl who was looking at him with sadness in her eyes. The girl who had just admitted that she loved him, the dead girl walking.  
It all went so fast. Before she could say anything more he had one arm around her, one hand cupping her cheek and his lips pressing against hers. It was messy, its wasn’t romantic or sweet.  
The Doctor vaguely thought that she was probably disappointed. Humans wanted to be loved. She had probably imagined him holding her gently, kissing her until her knees gave out.  
But she put her arms around him, trying to do the impossible, pulling him even closer. She kissed him back just as roughly, gasping for air. Her eyes shut tight, trying to understand the man in her arms.

“There was a war. A Time War,” the Doctor began.  
The two of them were lying on his bed, the sheets covering their naked bodies. It was dark in the room. The Doctor had his arms around Y/N, rubbing her back softly.  
“And I fought. I fought and I saw so many people die. The blood... I can still smell the blood, Y/N, even now. There weren’t enough graves for everybody, so the bodies just laid there in the streets, covered in sheets. It reminded me of when I was a little boy and a woman died. They covered her in the same white sheets. It didn’t stop the rotting. I can hear the flies buzzing.”  
Y/N pressed a soft kiss on his chest.  
“But that’s not all. That’s just the horrible things I saw as a soldier. Everybody saw them, even the civilians. That’s nothing special. But I did something so gruesome, so horrible that no God can ever forgive me. I committed genocide.”  
She didn’t stiffen in his arms. She just gave him another kiss, now on his jaw.  
“I had to kill them. Or the entire universe would die. I had to end it. So I pressed that button. I ended it and I survived. The coward, the man with the blood of an entire species on his hands, survived. So now you know.”  
“Now I know,” Y/N echoed. “And I forgive you.”  
“What?”  
“I forgive you, Doctor. Oh, I forgive you.”  
“Because you care?”  
“Because I care.”


End file.
